Chaplin v Information Commissioner: tribunal orders Cabinet Office to confirm honours vetting records

The First-tier Tribunal has partly allowed a freedom of information appeal concerning the Cabinet Office's handling of requests relating to the award of a damehood to former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, ruling that the department was wrong to refuse to confirm or deny whether it held certain categories of information.

In Ashley Chaplin v The Information Commissioner and the Cabinet Office [2026] UKFTT 1117 (GRC), a panel led by Judge Neville substituted its own decision for that of the Information Commissioner, requiring the Cabinet Office to issue a fresh response confirming or denying whether it holds material relating to two specific aspects of the appointment process, while upholding the withholding of other material as properly exempt.

Dame Cressida was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire while still serving as Commissioner, having been included in Theresa May's 2019 Resignation Honours List. Mr Chaplin submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 seeking information about the procedures followed in compiling that list and any material relating specifically to her inclusion. The Cabinet Office initially denied holding most of the requested material, a position it later revised during the Commissioner's investigation, disclosing some documents while withholding others under exemptions relating to the conferral of honours and personal data.

The tribunal heard that Mr Chaplin's interest in the request stems in part from the death of his husband, Gerhard Venter, found dead in Regent's Park in 2018, a death an inquest ruled to be suicide but which Mr Chaplin has never accepted. The panel was careful to note that its role was not to investigate the circumstances of that death or the propriety of the honour itself, and that duties under the Act are assessed by reference to the public interest generally rather than any individual requester's motives.

On the substance, the tribunal accepted evidence from a Cabinet Office official that its Honours and Appointments Secretariat plays a materially narrower role in resignation honours lists than in the King's Birthday or New Year lists, which are scrutinised by independent committees. For resignation lists, the Secretariat conducts probity and propriety checks only, has no role in assessing suitability or merit, and makes no recommendation as to who should receive an honour, with those decisions resting with the outgoing Prime Minister.

Applying that evidence, the panel upheld the Commissioner's finding that records of propriety checks on Dame Cressida were properly withheld, concluding that disclosure would add nothing to public understanding beyond what had already been confirmed about the process. It also largely upheld redactions to a submission sent to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, though it ordered disclosure of the name and position of the civil servant who signed it, finding no basis for withholding that detail.

The panel departed from the Commissioner's decision on two further parts of the request, concerning any consideration of the "politicisation" of the Metropolitan Police in the vetting process and a list of individuals involved in substantive decision making. It held that confirming whether such material existed would not, of itself, reveal protected deliberative content, since the Cabinet Office's own evidence was that no such assessment forms part of its ordinary role. Denial would simply confirm that the process operated as described, while confirmation would raise a different question altogether. The Cabinet Office must now issue that confirmation or denial within thirty days.